


Fresh Bread and Milk Tea

by calerine



Category: Snow Man (Japan Band)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27208273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calerine/pseuds/calerine
Summary: The morning after, she wakes up like she always does.Mrs. Iwamoto cares for her son the morning after the last of his debut concerts.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	Fresh Bread and Milk Tea

The morning after, she wakes up like she always does.

It’s autumn and the morning is chilly. She stands in her kitchen at 6 making breakfast for her family. Her daughter runs down ten minutes before she’s supposed to leave, sitting down to wolf down her piece of toast and slices of a mandarin orange before she kisses her mother and runs out of the front door. Today, she says nothing about waking up earlier to prepare for the day. After all, all of them had stayed up late the night before to wait for her oldest son to get home.

Her husband and younger boy are downstairs at 7:30 in their work uniforms.

“Mama, you’re not eating?” Her son asks, and before she can reply, he realises. “Ah, you’re waiting for niichan? I hope he gets to rest a little more.”

She laughs a little, placing the coffee pot on the dining table. “That’s one good thing about your niichan. For all his hard work, I’m glad he knows how to sleep in.” 

After they leave, she sits in her quiet kitchen sipping on her morning cup of coffee. The little pot of basil that sits snug in the corner makes her smile today, and she remembers the day her oldest son had brought it home in a sly attempt to ask her for her tomato sauce recipe. 

She takes her time to finish her coffee and tidies up the dishes in the sink. By the time she’s done, it’s ten o’clock. 

_ Just in time _ , she thinks, preheating their small family oven and pulling the tray of focaccia dough from the fridge. It’s spotty with air bubbles from being proofed overnight. Yesterday, she had watched her son on the family TV through the window at the kitchen counter while she kneaded it, thinking about the blisters on his feet from dancing in dress shoes and sneakers all weekend and hoping this would bring him a little joy.

Now she presses her fingertips into the olive oil-rich dough, and outside, the day is warming up. The sun comes in the kitchen windows in bright beams that set everything alight. The spring onion and leek ends have little baby roots emerging now. He’ll be pleased to see that. 

A final drizzle of olive oil, and she pushes the tray into the oven. It’ll take 45 minutes for it to be done, just enough time for her boy to stir and to make his way down to her side. She knows her children well enough to know when they will wake no matter how tired they are.

As if he heard her, she hears her son stirring upstairs, a thump onto the floor of his room.  _ Must be his phone _ , she thinks with a smile. For all his skill and prowess as a dancer, sometimes he forgets all of that at home, sometimes he’s just her son who used to sneak sweets from her kitchen in the middle of the night thinking she had no idea.

His footsteps are slow and heavy, trekking a path to the toilet before the faucet turns on. She must remember to run a warm footbath for him later when he is finished with breakfast. The salts that her neighbour recommended for tired, bruised feet are sitting behind the bathroom mirror, she must remember to tell him about that too. He’ll want to let his members know. 

It takes a few more minutes but then he’s making his way down the steps, stumbling a little on the last step as he does sometimes. Then her son is there, at the threshold of the kitchen, half-awake and wincing at the sun on his face. 

“‘ning,” he says, voice low and cracking under the weight of yelling and singing for four days straight. Under the weight of hundreds and thousands pairs of eyes, she thinks, under the weight of doing his best to bear all of their disappointment and frustrations and turn them to hope and joy. 

Her heart aches a little, but she knows nothing makes him happier and she loves him for being a good enough man to do it so willingly.

“Morning,” she smiles at him, going to brush his hair from his eyes. Here, without his younger siblings and his father, he is just her little boy, soft and without any expectations on his shoulders. 

He smiles back at her. “You saw it?” He asks, always so hopeful and waiting for her approval. She would give it to him any day of the week, all the time if he wanted. She’s so proud of him that her heart is bursting with it.

“I did. You were all incredible, especially you, Hikaru. I’m so happy for you, I’m so proud of you.” His nose wrinkles a little from the praise, and it makes her laugh, smoothing her hands along his broad shoulders. “All your hard work paid off, didn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he nods, voice cracking as a small quiet smile lights up his face.

She wants to say more, but she doesn’t want to make him cry here too, when he’s done so much of it in front of so many already. He gets it from her after all; she hates doing it too.

So she gestures for him to sit down. 

“I made your favourite focaccia,” she tells him, grinning at the delighted, surprised  _ eh? _ that escapes from his lips. “And milk tea with those nice leaves you like so much.” 

And this time, she sits to eat with him, breaking bread and slathering on butter between sips of too-sweet, too-milky tea, as he tells her about his past few days, the lives he’s lived and the eight other members of their family. 

**Author's Note:**

> They worked so hard, and I'm so happy it all paid off. I'm a brand new fan, and only got to know them when COVID-19 hit, and they've made what could be an even more awful so much better and brighter. I'm so thankful that they exist and I hope they got to rest today. 
> 
> After listening to their last speeches yesterday, I felt out of sorts all day and just had to write this. I hope it helps if you're feeling the same.


End file.
